All COBA7® asks, is for you to keep three pithy questions in mind as events occur and issues unfold during year 2016! Methinks this is going to be a tumultuous time for the manufactured housing industry & land-lease-lifestyle community asset class. And you?

Best Way to Prepare! Participate in Louisville MHShow @ 20-22 January. Seek me out at the LLLCommunity owners panel presentation, 10-11AM on the 20th. Request a postcard describing ‘Two Days of Plant Tours & Home Sales Seminars’ in Elkhart, IN.

Finally; the (MH) industry will not recover, or revive the attention & support of would be homebuyers/site lessees, politicians, and media, until our national advocates ‘get their act together’! An appropriate place to begin would be to end misreporting of monthly ‘new HUD-Code home shipments’ to members and affiliates. If they can’t get their numbers right, why should anyone (e.g. federal legislators, regulators) expect anything else right?

Remember; this blog is the sole national MH trade publication, online and in print, that welcomes ‘your reaction & responses’ to matters presented in here, in the Allen Letter professional journal, & the Allen CONFIDENTIAL! business newsletter. Simply respond: gfa7156@aol.com or Official MHIndustry HOTLINE: (877) MFD-HSNG or 633-4764.

FYI. 27th annual ALLEN REPORT was distributed this past week! Did you receive yours? If not, order it from COBA7® via Official MHIndustry HOTLINE listed above.

I.

Those Three Pithy Questions…

Here’re the Three Queries Read & Parsed by Our MH Peers last Week…

• Is Duty to Serve simply another federal $$$ entitlement program, this time in the housing arena; and, is it as GOOD – or BAD, for the American taxpayer, as for prospective manufactured housing buyers & the manufactured housing industry?

• With HUD-Code manufactured housing all but ‘dead in the water’, WHY is HUD rejuvenating ‘Dispute Resolution’ & ‘Federal Installation Standards’, dormant since promulgation in 2007 – when new home shipments were already 90% fewer than in 1998, & double the low number (55,000/yr. average) they are today? $$$!

• Is manufactured housing better served, federally-regulated & protected; or better off shedding 40 year regulatory fetters, to operate freely among local housing markets throughout the U.S.? Stockholm Syndrome or Freedom? Follow the $$$!

Here’s a sampling of paraphrased responses, to these heady questions, received from blog floggers (readers) throughout the U.S.

• “Your blog was a good analogy (‘comparison’) for your readers to comprehend and open their eyes to business politics reality.”

• “Local land planning wins the housing battle as they have immediate local power, not the federal HUD department. A good point you made, on the HUD fee structure supporting the department’s existence, even with manufactured housing (nearly) Dead on Arrival. HUD doesn’t really want us (i.e. manufactured housing), GSE’s (& FHFA) do not support our specialty financing needs, and HUD effects no publicity whatsoever, relative to including HUD-Code homes in any of its’ new creations or raw land developments.”

• Relative to just the third question: “I choose freedom – but you already knew that.” NB

So, why does any of this matter, since ‘two of the cows, figuratively speaking, have already left the barn’? Here thinking, year 2007 ‘regulatory rejuvenation’ by HUD, & MHIndustry preference for ‘continued federal regulation of manufactured housing’

Perhaps making them ‘matters of record’, for the time being, to be recollected in the near or interim future – 1) when LLLCommunities have been ‘nickel & dimed’ nearly out of business, and 2) federal regulation has done nothing to improve new manufactured housing shipment volume! And, Duty to Serve? Well, the FHFA proposed regulatory rule, on this matter, is available for comment until March 2016.Have you formally commented? Ross Kinzler and I have. Now we wait to see what happens, if anything….

II.

A Panel Colloquy You Don’t Want to Miss!

LLLCommunity Owners to Address Topics & Field Questions at Louisville MHShow on 20 January 2016 at 10:00AM. Be there!

It’s not often successful, experienced owners/operators of land-lease-lifestyle communities make a public appearance together, for the express purpose of sharing unique and helpful Lessons Learned within this realty asset class.

Partial list of who’s presenting and what they plan to cover?

Brian Fannon, CPM®, from MI, will describe the ‘Repositioning of a Distressed (closed) community, considering current local housing market conditions and other factors.’

Mark Wisely, from IN., is excited about his firm’s use of ‘Insulated steel panels’ in his communities, and how ‘1BR HUD-Code homes, in his view, are an untapped market’!

When I posted this week’s blog, I didn’t have word as to what other panelists would be covering during their allotted time. Perhaps I will next time around…

As facilitator of the panel, I’ll not make a formal presentation. But rather, will distribute plastic 3X5” wallet cards describing the ‘Five Right ‘Ps’ of Marketing’! The beauty of this is, a ‘Sixth Right ‘P’ has recently been added to the heady sequence, and will be introduced publicly for the first time, at the Louisville MHShow! Come and get your card – as long as supply lasts.

See what I mean? This hour-plus opportunity, For You, is chock full of good and helpful information relative to land-lease-lifestyle community ownership and operation. Be there!

And that’s not all! Spencer Roane, MHM®, of Pentagon Properties in Atlanta, GA., will be on hand, with his staff, to share his firm’s Lessons Learned relative to ‘Marketing of New HUD-Code Homes to the Hispanic Market!’ That session alone will see a full room!

Postscript.

This should be Headline News but isn’t! ‘How many COMMUNITY SERIES HOMES will be exhibited at this year’s Louisville MHShow?’ Anyone care to guess? Should be Dozens, and we hope that’s the case. I’ve already committed to a couple LLLCommunity owners, coming to buy CSH Models at the show, to photograph them, with their purchases, and run their stories in an upcoming issue of the Allen Letter professional journal. And hey, if YOU buy a new CSH Model at the home, let me know too! (317) 346-7156. One LLLCommunity owner/operator has committed to write and describe his/her experience ‘inspecting & buying’ a new Community Series Homes at this year’s show.

III

More Finagling of Monthly MH Shipment Numbers!

If a loyal reader of this weekly blog posting at community-investor.com, you’re already familiar with the contradictory reporting of monthly HUD-Code housing shipment numbers, compiled by the Institute of Building Technology & Safety (‘IBTS’), then reported to members and affiliates by MHARR, COBA7®, HUD, & the VAMMHA, versus a usually different total reported by MHI.

Well, we might just be at an impasse cum correction! On 4 January 2016, IBTS reported 5,980 new HUD-Code homes shipped during the month of November 2015. This same number was then reported to members and affiliates by MHARR, COBA7®, HUD, & the VAMMHA. However, as of 9 January, MHI had not reported November’s new HUD-Code home shipment total to members. If they adjust said IBTS figure, as in months past, their total will likely be 5,957. Or, they might start year 2016, by the same IBTS total as does MHARR, COBA7®, HUD, & the VAMMHA. Hmm. Guess we’ll just wait & see.

“…HUD Code manufacturers produced 5,980 homes in November 2015, a robust 20.6% increase over the 4,955 HUD Code homes produced during November 2014.” However…
‘
Here’s what MHARR did NOT tell their members: ’This 5,980 new HUD-Code homes total is 866 fewer homes than were produced in October 2015. And frankly, November’s 5,980 new HUD-Code homes are the fewest shipped since May 2015, six months ago!’

Nothing like ‘building one up’, when better served with a ‘dose of sobering reality’! And if this significant reduction in production, between October & end of November 2015, continues between November & end of December, there’s little reason to expect an annual cumulative total of 70,000 new HUD-Code homes shipped for year 2015!

Which, by the way, predicts yet a ‘third finagling’ of MHIndustry shipment totals. How so? Watch to see what MHARR, COBA7®, HUD, & VAMMHA report as the cumulative 2015 total, compared to a similar-but-likely-different total (maybe) reported by MHI. Notice IBTS is not mentioned in the previous sentence. Why? Because IBTS does not report annual cumulative totals of new HUD-Code homes shipped, as there’re ‘always’ Destination Pending units remaining at the end of every year, that make for an uncertain total. Now you know the rest of the story.

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